Women's Health

"Reform" measures on products liability
and non-economic damages would disproportionately affect the health and
safety of women.

American women have been disproportionately injured
by dangerous and defective drugs and products, especially those related
to reproduction. The anti-miscarriage drug DES, the Dalkon Shield and Copper-7
intrauterine devices, super-absorbent tampons that cause toxic shock, and
silicone-gel breast implants are but a few. These legal revisions would
make it even harder for women injured by defective drugs and devices to
hold wrongdoers accountable.

Statistics reinforce the importance of products
liability to women. Investigations conducted by law professor Michael Rustad
of Suffolk University in Boston of punitive damage awards in products liability
cases between 1963 and 1993 revealed that nearly 70 percent of all women
receiving punitive awards were injured by defective drugs or medical devices.

Limits on punitive damages are actually "gender
injustice in disguise," Rustad concludes. Rustad, who has studied
punitive awards, has found that nearly 50 percent of such awards in products
liability cases were made to women who had been injured by drugs or medical
devices.

Punitive damage awards are indispensable to women,
whose health concerns have been repeatedly neglected by federal agencies
such as the Food and Drug Administration. Despite decades of overwhelming
evidence of the need to regulate silicone gel breast implants, it was not
until 1992 that the FDA took action against the commercial distribution
of this product. Were it not for the vigilance of injured consumers in
uncovering and publicizing the implant's danger, the FDA might never have
addressed this health hazard.

So-called "reformers" assert that non-economic
losses are somehow not real and are unworthy of compensation and should
therefore be capped, but permanent injuries such as the loss of fertility
and gross disfigurement are by no means merely "hurt feelings."
The diminution of non-economic damages would have a Draconian effect on
women, the very people who have borne the brunt of many of this nation's
worst medical travesties. By elevating the importance of economic losses
and arbitrarily limiting non-economic losses, such legislation would only
duplicate and intensify the existing wage inequities in the market. Only
the tort system places proper value upon non-economic losses and warns
the medical industry to safeguard our health and safety -- it would be
foolhardy to allow legislation that would eliminate this warning.

Don't American women deserve the same legal
protections as everyone else? Their right to hold wrongdoers accountable
must not be diminished.